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The following account of the work of Karl
Gjellerup is by Sven Söderman, Swedish Critic

Karl Gjellerup was born in 1857 and died on
October 13, 1919. Like Henrik Pontoppidan, he came from a family
of ministers. He chose a career in the clergy although he felt no
special calling for it; rather his inclinations drew him strongly
toward literature, and alongside his "bread and butter studies"
he devoted himself to reading the Greek, English, and especially
the German classics. In the course of his theological studies, he
came gradually to take a purely negative attitude toward theology
and became attracted by the literary radicalism led by Georg
Brandes. In 1878 he made his literary début under the
pseudonym of "Epigonos" with a short novel entitled En
idealist [An Idealist]. He published next, in quick
succession, a series of tales and poems in which he posed as a
fanatic enemy of all theology and as a sworn partisan of Darwin
and the doctrine of evolution.

After this first period of anti-theological
battles, not marked by a profound originality, Gjellerup
undertook a trip abroad during which he collected his thoughts
and found his intellectual equilibrium. At the same time his
literary talent took on more distinct outlines: the description
of an era, "Romulus" (1883); the beautiful short story
"G-Dur" (1883) [G-Major], a portrait of intimacy; and
especially the great drama Brynhild (1884), which marks
the peak of his talent during this period. The theme of this
drama is the episode of the Volsunga Saga in which Sigurd and
Brunhilde, finding themselves on the same mountain, are separated
by their destiny but dream of and desire one another. This
waiting, full of torment, this quiet desire, imbues with
sentiment the tragedy which is presented with strength and with
great poetic and pictorial richness. The verse, especially in the
choruses composed in the ancient fashion, attains great lyric
beauty. The scope of the work is due to its depth and form;
through its idealism and moral elevation it contrasts absolutely
with the other productions of the naturalistic period during
which it was written. In spite of his freedom of thought,
Gjellerup had at bottom only a few common bonds with the
naturalistic school. He had, on the contrary, many more addresses
with German classicism, with the literature of antiquity, and
with the wealth of sentiments of Wagner, and when he realized
this fact, he broke sharply and publicly with the school of
Brandes in his travel book, Vandreaaret (1885) [Wander
Year]. His literary production (plays, lyric poems, stories) was
henceforth oriented toward idealism, but at the beginning it only
barely succeeded from the artistic point of view, even though the
richness of his poetic gifts was always visible in it. The best
of the books he published during the last years of this period
was the charming novel Minna (1889), a truly beautiful love story
and a delicate study of feminine psychology which must be classed
in the highest rank of Scandinavian novels. Let us cite also that
novel with the broadest foundations and a solid construction,
Møllen (1896) [The Mill], a curious analysis of the
state of mind of a murderer who becomes remorseful and denounces
himself; it is a work of tragic grandeur. Less remarkable as
works of art, but expressive of Gjellerup's high moral ideas
about marriage and the relationship between the sexes, are his
modem bourgeois dramas Herman Vandel (1891) ,
Wuthhorn (1893), and Hans Excellence (1895). These
dramas are not a plea for marriage. Indeed, the author puts the
idea of marriage above banal conventions, and precisely because
he puts it so high, he does not find it realized in ordinary
marriages. He proposes as a purer model the free union, even
though it would not have the consecration of church or state,
provided that this union is the only one in a human life.

These dramas, whose tendency is religious
despite their individualistic revolts, form a transition between
the first ideas of the author and those which characterize the
last and most significant period of his literary life. It was
without doubt the enthusiasm for the musical drama of Wagner, to
which he devoted a masterly work, which led him to the study of
Buddhist wisdom with its annihilation of the personality in the
universal world of Nirvana. Among the works written by Gjellerup
in the twentieth century, the best ones are inspired precisely by
these speculations on India and place on stage Hindu subjects
which he has treated so poetically and idealistically that they
have aroused general admiration. This period of his work began
with a musical play, Offerildene (1903) [The Sacrificial
Fires], the legend of a young disciple of Brahma who in the
simplicity of his pious soul discovers wisdom beneath the literal
sense of the law, and who wishes to preserve in the world the
three sacrificial fires: the fire of the soul, the flame of love,
and the fire of the funeral pyre which consumes the body.
Philosophical thought is here allied freely and harmoniously with
the creative imagination of a poet. In the great mythic novel,
Pilgrimen Kamanita (1906), which contains a history of
Buddha's, era, Gjellerup has elucidated the essential
characteristics of the Buddhist conception of the world, its
doctrine of renunciation, its effort toward perfection, and its
dreams of paradise, of Nirvana, and of universal destruction.
Kamanita is the man in search of earthly satisfactions who, after
seeing the fragility of all things, desires instead eternal
treasures. We follow him not only during his earthly life but
also during the different transformations he undergoes in the
"Western Paradise", in which the tropical sumptuousness of India
is rediscovered. Those who have destroyed themselves awaken here
and leave their lotus buds to participate in the dance of the
blessed and to undergo new incarnations, following which their
souls begin a new existence in the empire of the Buddha of the
hundred thousand cycles. In spite of its uninterrupted
speculations on Hindu philosophy, this poem exercises a singular
fascination. Quite intuitively the poet seems to have penetrated
into the spiritual life of a far-off people and to have expressed
their dreams of it with the visionary's gift. In certain passages
of this poem one finds the spirit of the Arabian Nights, and
certain parts of the Western Paradise present a penetrating
picture of the sumptuous magnificence of the life of the blessed.
In the same way the drama Den fuldendtes hustru (1907)
[The Wife of the Perfect One], which deals with the purifications
that Buddha's wife must undergo to attain perfection, is a
masterpiece. The author has succeeded in permitting his own
nature and genius to shine through these dogmatic and
philosophical revelations of a millennial philosophy. Gjellerup's
last great work, Verdens vandrerne (1910) [World
Wanderers], with its half-Oriental, half-western moral, does not
attain the same artistic beauty, but it contains beautiful
details and holds our interest through a mysticism full of
imagination as much as through the development of the action.

Karl Gjellerup was that strange
combination, a scholar as well as a poet. His inventive
imagination and his gifts of visionary poetry were often
difficult to harmonize with his specific knowledge and his lively
intelligence. His earlier works are characterized by very broad
but sometimes clumsy descriptions, philosophical rather than
spontaneous. They occasionally neglect artistic form, but they
are always rich in ideas and full of promises of originality.
Among them are such remarkable works as Brynhild and
Minna. A poet who gathers all the flowers; a spirit that
seeks tirelessly until it reaches its true domain in the world of
Hindu mysticism, in which his profound thought and his ideal
effort to clarify the enigmas of truth and life are combined with
his artistic instinct: such is the Gjellerup of the second
period. Thought charged with emotion, a great knowledge of the
soul, a great desire for beauty, and a poetic art have given
birth to works of enduring value. The author of Pilgrimen
Kamanita and Den fuldendtes hustru has justifiably
been called the "classic poet of Buddhism".